After a few more words with Brandon, he wished him good night and moved on, leaving that worthy man to think how ill-mannered he was. ‘And he used to sit and look at my young lady in a way that any one must have noticed,’ thought Brandon, rather indignantly. Myles walked homewards, deciding in his own mind that he would not go near Blake Street again until after Brandon should be gone. He pictured Adrienne in London, with plenty of friends, visiting the Mallorys, happy--the man had given no sort of hint that she was not happy. Suppose he happened to be in London, to be in the same room with her, to pass her in the street! He had forfeited the right to claim her acquaintance; he did not think he would have the courage to address her. He had made a great mess, a horrible mistake, when he repulsed that advance of hers; for that it had been an advance there could be now no doubt, since there had never been anything between her and Sebastian Mallory. What a shock, what offence, that behaviour of his must have caused her! The dead silence which had supervened on her part showed how she must have taken it. His heart ached a good deal as he walked towards his home. What profited him all this solitary, lonely prosperity? If he could have exchanged it all for one more of those evenings at Stonegate in the old days--for one more of those glances from Adrienne, which used to intoxicate him with their half-frank, half-timid expression--he would have flung all he had to the winds, and begun life again to-morrow, if he could have seen her once again betrayed into such a look, such a tone, as that with which she had said, ‘Oh, Myles!’ one Sunday afternoon. But that would never be. She too had found that Thanshope was not the place for her. She would never come to Stonegate again. When next he saw it, it would be empty, dismantled, a shell. He wondered--and immediately felt eager that it should be so--whether Sebastian Mallory would let _him_ have Stonegate. There was no other place in which he cared to live. A fear seized him, lest it might already have been promised to some one else. He hastened his steps, and as soon as he got in wrote to Sebastian, and dropped the letter with his own hand into the letter-box. He had written urgently. If Mr. Mallory had not already disposed of Stonegate, might he, Myles Heywood, become its tenant, at whatever rent Mr. Mallory pleased, even to the half of his income? Repairs and everything of that kind (he mixed up business and sentiment in a hurried jumble) were to be his concern, and his alone. And might he have an answer soon? He did not care whether the reasons of his eagerness were guessed or not by Sebastian. By return of post he had an answer: